Nebraska’s 22 mountain lions in the crosshairshttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/nebraskas-mountain-lions-in-the-crosshairs
The larger question looms: Who "owns" wildlife in this state?It was just a few years ago that Nebraskans were awe-struck by the mountain lion’s return to the state after a century’s absence. Now we’re getting ready to hunt them down.

There are only an estimated 22 cougars currently roaming the state’s 77,000 square miles. Yet that’s enough to justify a hunting season, at least according to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.

The decision wasn’t a surprise. The nine commissioners were appointed by a like-minded governor who leans over backward to please the state’s agriculture interests, which demand that any potential threat to their livestock and corn -- however minuscule or exaggerated -- must be eliminated.

“We got along fine without them for 100 years,” said one anti-cougar Nebraska farmer. “We don’t want them.”

“God forbid they don’t eat a child,” wrote another over-excited rural Nebraskan. “Remember, people, these are killers, not pets, and you are on their food list.”

So far, humans have not provided much food for mountain lions. Statistics vary, but there have been between 12 and 20 fatal cougar attacks in the United States in the past 125 years -- about one every six to 10 years.

There is no documented case of a cougar ever stalking or threatening a human in Nebraska. There is no record of a cougar even killing a cow or any other livestock in the state. Nebraskans might be wiser to look over their shoulders for other, more deadly (if less dramatic-looking) creatures.

Those bees and wasps buzzing outside a barn or porch? They kill 40 to 50 Americans each year. That brown recluse or black widow nestled in one of your home’s ceiling corners? You are 40 to 50 times more likely to die from a spider bite than a cougar attack. And your neighbor’s German shepherd? It is 400 times more likely to come after you than a cougar is.

In fact, according to CDC statistics, a person living in the United States is 75 times more likely to die from choking on a toothpick than being attacked by a mountain lion. Given the dietary preponderance of meat and corn in Nebraska, there are plenty of toothpicks in our kitchens. Just remember to pick with care, OK?

Aside from the irrational fear of cougars, a larger question looms here: Who “owns” the wildlife in Nebraska? Is it just the hunters, outfitters, ranchers and farmers? Or is it all Nebraskans?

If cougars -- and all of our wildlife and natural resources, including our badly mismanaged groundwater -- are determined to be a part of the commons, shouldn’t all Nebraskans have a say in how we manage them?

That is the argument of New York biologist John Laundre, one of the most eminent cougar-ologists in the country. He is vice president of the Cougar Rewilding Foundation and author of the book “Phantoms of the Prairie: The Return of Cougars to the Midwest.”

“We need a dramatic change in how wildlife are managed in this country, and the separation of ‘game’ management and wildlife management is the first critical step,” he wrote in a commentary, “Who Owns the Wildlife?” “Let the game agencies with their millions of hunter dollars manage the deer and the ducks, but let new wildlife agencies manage the rest of the wildlife the way they should be managed, based on sound ecological science, not hunter demands.”

Before implementing its mountain lion management plan, the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks invited public comment in 2010. The agency received 112 comments. Ninety-six people expressed displeasure with the agency’s plan to increase the cougar “harvest,” and more than two-thirds of those 96 said they were against the hunting of lions altogether. There were seven comments that were neutral or undecided. Only about 9 percent of those responding favored increased hunting of cougars. Of course, that did not deter the department from deciding to hunt cougars anyway.

The reality is that a growing majority of Nebraskans -- and South Dakotans -- want honest-to-goodness wildlife management and environmental stewardship. Both have been sorely lacking.

As one South Dakotan commenter wrote: “It is beyond comprehension why the most rural states are the first to fear and kill a very shy and harmless species.”

Even without an official hunting season, Nebraskans are now allowed to shoot a cougar -- if they are lucky enough to see one. All they have to do is say they felt threatened, aim, fire, and all is fine and dandy. Who will ever know the truth?

But that doesn’t make it any easier to understand why Nebraska feels compelled to allow the hunting of a mere 22 mountain lions whose threat to humans is effectively zilch. That got me wondering: If the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission received a couple of reports about invading two-legged, hairy, carnivorous-looking “creatures,” might it consider starting a hunting season on Bigfoot, too? Why wait to confirm that a creature exists when you can just start shooting at its shadow?

Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News He is an editor and freelance writer in Grand Island, Nebraska.

]]>No publisherWildlifeWriters on the Range2013/09/24 04:00:00 GMT-6ArticleA moral issue confronts industrial farmershttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/a-moral-issue-confronts-industrial-farmers
Farmers in Nebraska are feeling the pressure from groups that demand better treatment for animals on factory farms.Did you know that Nebraska is being invaded by "terrorists" and "conspiracists?" Perhaps the kindest descriptive noun some unnerved Nebraskans are using these days is "extremists."

Brace yourself: The terrorists and extremists in question are various organizations and people who care about the welfare of farm animals, led by the Humane Society of the United States. And the "conspiracy" they're engaged in is an attempt to improve conditions for those animals, especially on factory farms.

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman inaugurated hostilities about a year ago, and he hasn't let up. "I'm an Army Ranger," Heineman told a receptive audience recently. "This guy (Humane Society President Wayne Pacelle) wants to engage in guerrilla warfare. I'll teach him a thing or two."

Production and industrial agriculture leaders in the state, led, not surprisingly, by the Nebraska Farm Bureau, echo similar sentiments. Said one dairy producer: "The most frightening issue is consumers' growing concern over animal welfare."

An official of the Nebraska Corn Growers agreed: "(the Humane Society) and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) ... are destroying agriculture and rural America. We can't let this happen. Stand up and fight for America."

Since when was concern for farm animals frightening or un-American? Perhaps the current fuss is due to all the attention that's suddenly being paid to what happens down on the farm. In just the last three months:

The United Egg Producers and the Humane Society recently announced a compromise that would improve farm conditions for egg-laying hens, doubling the size of their cages and offering them perches and nest boxes.

McDonald's, the biggest restaurant chain on the planet, will no longer purchase pork that's produced by tightly confining pregnant sows in "gestation crates" on factory farms.

Smithfield Foods, the larger pork producer in the world, has pledged to phase out the use of those gestation crates by 2017.

Perhaps the biggest blow for change was struck by Nebraska's Farmers Union, which entered into a partnership with the Humane Society to explore options for "constructive compromise" on farm animal-welfare issues.

The Nebraska Farm Bureau and its allies have responded to these developments by hunkering down in the trenches. They have attacked their critics and done their best to create fear among Nebraskans by rehashing tired and nonsensical statements, saying that the Humane Society "wants to take away your freedom of food choices." They are trying hard to rally their troops, whose numbers continue to dwindle as gigantic industrial farms become increasingly difficult to defend.

Production agriculture's old mantra of "feeding the world" is starting to lose out to people's sense of morality. Countless surveys and polls show this, including one right here in Nebraska just last year. It found that "most rural Nebraskans (69 percent) agree that animal welfare means more than providing adequate water, water and shelter; that it also includes adequate exercise, space and social activities for the animals."

That percentage would probably have been much higher -- likely near 90 percent -- if urbanites in Lincoln and Omaha had been polled, too.

Ultimately, this is an issue that the public will decide with its principles and pocketbooks. If consumers in New York and California want ethically raised meats and poultry, that's what they'll buy. A Kansas State University study last year found that 62 percent of grocery shoppers favored mandatory labeling of pork produced on farms using gestation crates or stalls.

The Farm Bureau and other self-proclaimed "mainstream" farm groups and their political backers say they're fighting outsiders in order to save American agriculture. A more accurate description of what they're doing is fighting the conscience of America. As John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, puts it, "This is a fight Nebraska agriculture would lose, and do permanent damage to our public perception and our relationship with food consumers in the process."

It always takes us a while, but the history of this country reveals that sooner or later, we do our best to walk our righteous talk. It took centuries until we finally acknowledged that slavery was morally repulsive, that women are on par with (and sometimes exceed) men in smarts and resolve, and that every human being, regardless of color, deserves equal civil rights. And even though there is still some resistance to the idea, most Americans now believe that gay and lesbian people pose no threat to family life in America and, in some instances, may enhance it.

"We manage to stumble along and get things done the right way," says Bernard Rollin, the renowned Colorado State University animal ethicist.

Animal welfare is the country's next big moral movement. The majority of Americans, urban and rural, have come to feel that animals, including the animals we eat, merit freedom from the abominable conditions found in America's 16,000 concentrated animal feeding operations.

This raises an important question, not just for Nebraska but for other farming states as well: Who's really in the mainstream on this issue?

Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a writer in Grand Island, Nebraska.

]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryWriters on the Range2012/03/16 01:00:00 GMT-6ArticleA more colorful future awaits Nebraskahttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/a-more-colorful-future-awaits-nebraska
As the Latino population of Nebraska grows, some locals worry, while others rejoice in the state's increasing diversity.The 2010 Census recently revealed that the population of Grand Island, Nebraska's fourth-largest city, has increased by a whopping 13 percent over the past decade. This was exciting news in a state in which 69 of the 93 counties lost population since 2000, and a third of those counties lost more than 25 percent of their people.

Fueling Grand Island's growth was a surge in the Hispanic population, which was 72 percent higher than in 2000. Statewide, the rise in Latino numbers was 77 percent. Neither development was surprising: Hispanics lead employment in meatpacking, construction and lawn maintenance, and these days, they can be found in almost every job.

What wasn't unexpected, either, was the reaction from alarmists in Nebraska: We're getting overrun! More Hispanics, they shriek, means more crime, more white unemployment, more hole-in-the-wall taco houses -- perhaps the end of the good life of which Nebraska so proudly boasts. For paranoid people who hold that view, I've got bad news: It's going to get worse. But if you value and enjoy diversity, life is just going to get a whole lot better.

Here in the United States, Hispanics tend to live longer than Anglos. A 2010 report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the life expectancy of Hispanics in this country now surpasses that of Anglos by nearly 2.5 years. Hispanics, it seems, and especially the most recent Latin American immigrants, are less susceptible to stress than other Americans.

Latinos are also having more children than whites. According to National Vital Statistics Reports, the 2009 birth rate for non-Hispanic whites aged 15-44 was 11 per 1,000 women; for Hispanics, it was 20.6. Hispanics account for only about one in six Americans, but one in four U.S. children.

Despite this, there continues to be a trend of underestimating the number of Latinos in the United States. The Pew Hispanic Center calculated that there are 1 million more Hispanics here than population estimates showed in April 2010.

The raw population numbers are nothing short of stunning. Between 2000 and 2010, for example, the non-Hispanic population of Texas increased by roughly 1.5 million people, not an unimpressive number. But the Hispanic population grew by nearly twice that number. The same thing happened in Kansas, where the Anglo population grew by 50,000 but the Latino population more than doubled.

In the past decade, the percentage of non-Hispanic Texas whites under age 18 plunged from 42.6 to 33.8 percent; the percentage of Latinos in the same age group jumped from 40.5 to 48.3 percent. San Antonio, Texas, grew from 56 percent Hispanic in 2005 to 63 percent Hispanic in 2010. Elsewhere in the Midwest, Hispanic populations were up 103 percent in South Dakota, 85 percent in Oklahoma, 84 percent in Iowa and 80 percent in Missouri. Meanwhile, the Anglo population growth in those five states was in the single digits.

The escalation of the Hispanic population (as well as other non-white groups) means that the American palette will get even more vibrant in the future. Whites will likely become a minority in the United States around 2041 or 2042, according to the latest estimates. Only six years ago, the Census Bureau estimated that whites would remain a majority until 2050.

That's quite the opposite of what Josiah Strong envisioned 125 years ago. In 1885, Strong, a popular American Protestant clergyman and writer in his time, envisioned everlasting white supremacy in the Western Hemisphere. Anglo-Saxons in the United States, he wrote, "will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea. ..."

It will be interesting to see how white Americans deal with the new inevitabilities. Some will write nasty letters to local newspapers and spread stereotypes and myths, though it might be a better idea to simply embrace the change and begin learning more about the rest of the world and its incredibly diverse cultures.

And trust me, all those unpretentious "taco houses" -- like La Mexicana, La Cabana, El Tazumal and others in Grand Island -- offer excellent service and unique dishes. There you can find plates such as Pollo Michoacano, with its chorizo and poblano peppers, and an authentic Central American pupusa, with frijoles and curtido.

In my mind, that makes Nebraska's beef-and-potatoes good life even better.

Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a writer and editor in Grand Island, Nebraska.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesLatinosWriters on the RangeEssays2011/06/07 00:00:00 GMT-6ArticleGreat Plains aurahttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/great-plains-aura
On an abandoned farm in South Dakota, the spirits of the author's ancestors seem to hover in the air.Not long ago, I revisited the long-abandoned farm in south-central South Dakota where my grandparents farmed for over 30 years. Nothing could induce any of their children or grandchildren to copy their commitment to this lonely land, but it took a nasty cancer to get grandpa Lyle off the place.

Standing at the farm's highest point, the top of the pasture, I could see for miles in any direction. I closed my eyes and felt the warm breezes and, with them, the presence of my grandparents.

I opened my eyes and noticed that the farmyard where I hit baseballs and chased chickens was now covered with weeds. The only animals in sight were a multitude of barn swallows that frolicked about as if they owned the place. To the east was a familiar sight -- the Rattlesnake Hills. At least that's what grandpa called them. Decades later, I learned that its real name was Bradleyon Butte, and it stood 2,355 feet above sea level. There was another rise called Rattlesnake Butte about 10 miles further east. My younger sister and I didn't know if rattlesnakes wandered those buttes, and we weren't interested in finding out.

I found some old items in the farmyard, including a 1963 license plate. But I was more attracted to the unobstructed view of much of Tripp County. When I was almost a teenager, in this very spot, I had no clue about where I was. I only knew what and how I felt. One minute I'd feel uneasy, thinking this vast solitude and expanse just might swallow me whole if I ventured too far away from the farm. The next moment, I was comforted by the cozy air currents, sweet scent of clover and sun shadows that danced over these fields and rolling hills.

On the day I returned, more than four decades later, I felt exactly the same way. That's what the Great Plains do to you. Although maps tell us the North American Plains eventually turn upward into mountains, it never feels that way. It feels as if this land must go on forever.

The Great Plains -- the adjective "great" is almost an understatement -- is North America's unrestrained region -- one that begins at the 100th meridian and inconspicuously moves west to the base of the Rockies. It encompasses parts of 10 states, three Canadian provinces and even a speck of northern Mexico -- a half-million square miles.

Some say it might even be larger. In his 1931 "The Great Plains," Walter Prescott Webb, the 19th century Texas historian, pegged the 98th Parallel as the easternmost point of this prairie. That would push the Plains farther east to include a sliver of northwest Minnesota, too.

The Great Plains is a juxtaposition of undulations, badlands, grasslands and river valleys, some fertile and some just about lifeless. The subtleties of its terrain can be mesmerizing. Even as a child I felt that there was always more to this land than its apparent monotony. The western half of South Dakota is defined by its 2,500-foot buttes, each with its own name and story. How else could you explain Dog Ear Butte, Buzzard Butte and, just a half-hour east of my grandparents' farm, Haystack Butte? What are the stories behind The Devils Backbone, Half Dome and Plenty Star Table? And who named all these places anyway?

Up and down the Plains, the place names tell of the dreams and challenges faced by those who settled here: Golden Valley and Devils Lake, N.D.; Last Chance, Colo.; Utopia, Texas, and Winner, S.D., about eight miles southwest of my grandparents' farm.

You can read some of their stories in historical accounts that chronicle the lives of our own grandparents and great-grandparents -- Pawnee and Lakota Sioux, Irish and Scandinavians, and Germans, Russians, Latinos and Poles. My grandparents were of German and Danish ancestry, sculpted by the rugged seasons, by a wind that was often harsh but always fresh. They were deeply aware of their place on these Great Plains and, I think, came to cherish the intricacies of nature out here.

They knew that despite its name, Thunder Creek wouldn't run full every year, and maybe during some years it wouldn't run at all. They saw how promising thunderheads on the horizon often died before reaching their farm. They watched as the winds sometimes turned violent.

But on the day I visited, the breezes were anything but fierce. They cradled me as I stood alone on top of this hill, with nobody at all for miles around. Nobody except my grandparents, whose resilient spirits I again felt. That gave me great comfort, because the one thing's that certain out here is that the wind never stop blowing.

Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a freelance writer in Grand Island, Nebraska.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesWriters on the Range2009/07/31 15:00:00 GMT-6ArticleLike it or not, corn is in every mealhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/17468
Pete Letheby believes that King Corn and its byproducts,
particularly the high-fructose corn syrup that’s in almost
everything we eat, are to blame for the nation’s obesity and
its agricultural pollution.

For the first time in
history, the youngest generation alive today is at risk of a
shorter lifespan than their parents. As we begin the 21st century,
we have managed to take a great leap backward: We’re living
shorter lives.

We know why. It’s because of our
poor diets, our alarming proclivity for fast food, and the
increasing epidemic of obesity and diabetes in our country. Most of
all, it’s because of our addiction to corn. That’s the
stomach-turning message of “King Corn,” a polished
documentary making the rounds of theaters nationwide and raising
the eyebrows of many Americans.

The movie traces the
journey of Yale college buddies Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who head
to the nation’s heartland to find out where their food comes
from. The two purchase one acre of farmland near Greene, Iowa,
plant it to corn, harvest it, and then begin a journey of discovery
that blows them away. Cheney and Ellis follow their corn to a
mega-feedlot in Colorado, where it fattens cattle quickly. But that
is just the tip of the silo.

The corn winds up not only
in our beef, the two find out, but also in the majority of other
foods we consume in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. The syrup
is a sweetener found in darn near everything we consume, including
applesauce, salad dressing, cookies, chocolate milk, ketchup,
granola bars, steak sauce, stewed tomatoes and chewing gum. You
name it, it’s probably got corn.

Corn-fed cattle --
and remember, cows were not made to eat corn, but evolved as
grazers of grasses -- and high-fructose corn syrup are the biggest
culprits in America’s slide into obesity. In 1971, 47.7
percent of Americans were categorized as overweight or obese. By
2004, that percentage had ballooned to 66 percent.

“Hamburger meat is rather fat disguised as meat,” says
Loren Cordain, University of Colorado agricultural economist, in
“King Corn.” The corn lobby makes the claim that our
obesity is the result of choices made by consumers, and it says
that corn is the best thing since automobiles and television. The
movie, Rob Robertson of the Nebraska Farm Bureau told me,
“exaggerates corn and the problems it causes and overlooks
all the benefits corn has for our country and our society.”

But it has become increasingly difficult to shrug off the
disturbing parallels between our growing portliness and
deteriorating health, and the foods that have permeated our diets.
“Even our French fries -- half the calories in the French
fries come from the fat they’re cooked in, which is liable to
be corn oil or soy oil,” says Michael Pollan, author of The
Omnivore’s Dilemma.

“King Corn” finds
two other flaws in America’s making of food: The
industrialization of agriculture, which has fueled intensive use of
farm chemicals and caused pollution to our streams and rivers, and
our system of deeply ingrained subsidies. The subsidies granted by
Congress reward the over-production of commodity grains and ignore
the value of nutritious foods such as vegetables, fruits and lean
meats, such as grass-fed beef. In 2005, nearly $10 billion in
federal subsidies encouraged farmers to grow a surplus of corn. But
only a small fraction of that money went for subsidizing nutritious
foods. The recent high prices for corn have also transferred
subsidies from corn growers to corn-ethanol producers.

Because we grow corn in ever-increasing amounts in America, the
corn lobby -- with the exuberant help of university researchers,
Monsanto and the like -- has spent big money over the decades to
find alternative uses for the grain. Presto! That spurred the
development of high-fructose corn syrup, and, as the two student
farmers come to realize, cheap food made more palatable with corn
syrup is not necessarily healthy food. It’s refreshing to see
“King Corn” stimulating a needed debate about our
nation’s farm policy, and it’s perhaps predictable that
the corn lobby deems any criticism of its crop and its role in our
food system to be anti-farmer and anti-American.

On the
contrary, investigation and debate are what make America a truly
democratic country. We love to talk, we love to eat, and a lot of
us have become really curious about what’s in that corn dog.

Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He writes and
reports in Grand Island, Nebraska.]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleWestern water is petering outhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/17390
Pete Letheby says the West is headed for a hotter and
drier future, and this time, as farmer Gerald Spangler warns him,
we’re running out of groundwater.

Gerald Spangler needs
no statistics or charts to tell him what he already knows: We are
running out of water.

Spangler is a semi-retired farmer
who has lived in southwest Nebraska, 15 miles east of the Colorado
border, since the Dust Bowl days. In 1 979, he drilled his first
groundwater well to a depth of 240 feet. Three years ago, the
driller had to go down 380 feet at the same site before finding
groundwater for domestic use.

That's a 1 40-foot drop in
25 years, and "It's kind of scary," Spangler admits. Spangler's
farm is the epitome of an increasingly alarming development across
the entire country, particularly the Great Plains and West. A
recent National Ground Water Association survey received responses
from 43 states nationwide, and all reported water shortages and
anticipated more of the same in the future.

Dire straits
in Las Vegas, Denver, Phoenix, Houston and other locales are well
documented, as is the unsettling state of affairs with the
over-appropriated Colorado River. A shortage of available water may
also do something nobody ever thought possible: Halt the relentless
development up and down the Colorado Rockies' east slopes.

Multi-year drought conditions over much of the nation's
heartland and decreased mountain snowmelt in the West -- both
likely exacerbated by climate change and both likely to worsen,
climatologists say -- have heightened awareness. But clearly, most
of the fault for the current dilemma lies with ourselves. Our
voracious appetite for water and the development that requires that
water are pushing nature to the brink.

The Ogallala
Aquifer, which covers 175,000 square miles and underlies eight
states in places, has experienced dramatic declines of well over
100 feet in some locations since large-scale irrigation began in
the 1 950s. The USGS notes that the aquifer has been depleted by 9
percent since the advent of groundwater irrigation. That doesn't
sound like much of a problem, but consider this: A 2001 Kansas
State University study warned that only 15 percent of this vast
underground ocean is physically and economically feasible to pump
to the surface.

Aboveground, the defining waterways of
the Plains and West -- the Platte, the Arkansas and the Colorado --
are shells of their former selves after a century of surface
diversions and groundwater pumping. Indeed, the headwaters of the
Arkansas River near Leadville, Colo. often give out before they get
to Dodge City, Kan., 450 miles downstream from Leadville.

If anything is benefiting from all these miscalculations and water
grabs, it is our legal system. It took more than two decades of
court dates for Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado to reach their
recent agreement on flows of the Platte River. Texas and New Mexico
have wrangled for years over Pecos River water, and the Klamath's
water tension in the Northwest has made newspaper headlines for
decades.

To complicate matters, the Midwest's misguided
fixation on creating ethanol from water-consuming corn is further
endangering our precious groundwater reservoirs. Research shows
that it takes 2,000 or more gallons of irrigated water to produce
one bushel of corn. Amazingly, after just one year of operation, a
single ethanol plant in Granite Falls, Minn., reduced that area's
aquifer level by 90 feet.

The days of blank checks for
water appropriations and water rights will soon pass into history.
We can no longer use our groundwater and surface water as we
please, nor for as long as we please. If we wish to avoid a future
of water tribulations, we will need to adopt a Depression-era
mentality: Recycle and reuse, and most of all, conserve. We will
also need to finally consider water as both a public trust and a
"commons," and use it accordingly. That will necessitate a painful
change of priorities, one that gives recreation and ecosystem
preservation seats at the table with municipalities, agriculture
and industry.

If we fail to take action, scenarios now
playing out in rural and urban areas of the Great Plains westward
will become much more common. The phrase "Dust Bowl" is freely
tossed about these days, although most refuse to believe it could
ever happen again. We should not be so arrogant. Gerald Spangler,
for one, will tell you he doesn't want to find out what happens if
nature's limits are pushed too hard.

"Human judges can
show mercy," visionary Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, "but against
the laws of nature, there is no appeal."

Pete
Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He is a journalist and
free–lance writer in Grand Island,
Nebraska.]]>No publisherClimate ChangeWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleBring on the immigrantshttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/17051
Pete Letheby says the vanishing towns of the Great Plains
and Midwest ought to open a welcoming door for
immigrants. Sometimes it’s all in
the way you look at things. As many Great Plains and Midwest
communities continue down the slippery slope of depopulation, they
grasp for any kind of development. That’s why industrial
livestock operations and corn ethanol plants are so popular these
days.

Yet some of these communities already have a
resource that could help stop the out-migration hemorrhaging and
even give them a much-needed transfusion: Immigrants.

The
U.S. Census Bureau reported last year that Latinos open new
businesses at three times the national average. What better way for
stale Midwest communities to secure new enterprise? Latin American
and east African immigrants are much younger than the present rural
Midwest population. What better way to infuse youth and vibrancy
into farm-dependent, aging Heartland communities? Latinos have
fewer divorces and attend church in greater numbers than the U.S.
average. Proportionately, there are more Latinos in the U.S. armed
forces than any other ethnic group. Latinos also place a high
priority on a family-friendly lifestyle. What could better
complement the “family values” mindset of the rural
Midwest?

Statistics show that Latinos, east Africans and
other immigrant groups are increasingly attracted to non-metro
areas and increasingly to states and cities that, a couple decades
ago, had little ethnic diversity. For the first time in U.S.
history, half of the country’s non-metro Hispanics live
outside the five Southwestern states of California, Arizona, New
Mexico, Texas and Colorado.

Sure, immigrants still
populate areas that you’d expect, including Florida and New
York. But many are demonstrating a desire to settle just about
anywhere where there’s employment and welcoming communities.
For example, the largest contingent of Sudanese immigrants in any
state is in Nebraska, one of the last places you’d expect to
find them.

From 1990 to 2000, the number of Hispanics in
Sioux Falls, S.D., increased by 400 percent and is now around
6,000. In the last decade of the 20th century, Latino populations
have nearly doubled, or more than doubled, in Kansas, Nebraska,
Oklahoma, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri, well above the national
average. Admittedly, the percentages were low prior to 1990, but
the increases are noteworthy. Grand Island, Neb., has a population
of 45,000, at least a fourth of them Latinos and another 3 percent
African or Asian. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that 30
different languages are spoken in Hall County, Neb., which includes
Grand Island, where I live.

Not every ethnically varied
community will be a Taos or a Juneau, but the possibilities are
real if rural communities seize them. Frequently it is food
processing, manufacturing and construction jobs that initially
attract minorities to rural communities. But the population
metamorphosis often translates into expanded business and
educational opportunities, and a new ambience rich in cultural
diversity.

In Garden City, Kan., population 30,000, the
Hispanic population grew from 14.5 percent in 1980, to 25.3 percent
in 1990, to 43.3 percent in 2000. There are also African-American
and Asian-American residents. Garden City experienced distinct
growing pains, but the community has rallied, and, says a
University of Kansas study, has been “transformed into a
vibrant multicultural oasis on the central High Plains.”

So why are some Midwest communities so slow in rolling
out the welcome mat? I think there’s a deeply rooted
resistance to change, and there also remains a subtle racism that
has pervaded the Midwest since the original settlers broke land.
Osha Gray Davidson pointed it out nearly two decades ago in
“Broken Heartland,” and it holds true yet today:
“The Heartland has a dirty little secret. Beneath the warm
smiles and bland platitudes about ‘simple folk’ and
‘real values’ lies the same racial and ethnic
intolerance that blights American society elsewhere.”

Indeed, in a 2006 Nebraska Rural Poll conducted by the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, only 31 percent of those surveyed
agreed with the statement that new residents who move into their
community improve the quality of life. When confronted with
diversity, some Midwesterners see disarray and obstacles.
Nonetheless, it is diversity that offers locals a chance to halt or
reverse the stagnation that plagues much of the region.

In its publication, “A Rural Service Provider’s Guide
to Immigrant Entrepreneurship,” the Iowa Center for Immigrant
Leadership and Integration laid out some sound advice for changing
Midwest communities: “New immigrants have begun to fill gaps
in rural streetscape, populate area schools and tenant vacant
housing. These new residents are largely unknown and unacknowledged
…. Yet these new immigrants represent a wealth of talent,
passion and entrepreneurial zeal that could help revitalize rural
America.”

If only we look at it that way.

Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org. He is a
journalist in Grand Island, Nebraska.]]>No publisherGrowth & SustainabilityImmigrationWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleCorn ethanol isn't all it's cracked up to behttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/16292
The writer likes ethanol, but not when it's made with
corn This was supposed to be a
cakewalk, a no-brainer, a slam-dunk.

Ethanol from corn
lessened our dependence on foreign oil, they told us. It helped our
struggling Midwestern farmers. It was much better for the
environment. Who could not support this?

As it turns out,
quite a few of us. Ethanol plants are sprouting like weeds in
mid-America, but more and more question marks are emerging along
this corn-paved road to energy independence. Ethanol, as it is made
from corn, isn't nearly the renewable fuel it's cracked up to be.

Here's the simple but telling equation: Our federal farm
bill subsidizes the growing of corn — about $10 billion this
past year, according to the Environmental Working Group. That
policy leads to overproduction of this thirsty crop, which drains
the Great Plains' precious Ogallala Aquifer and requires massive
amounts of nitrate fertilizer that, inevitably, seep into that same
groundwater.

Our federal, state and local governments
also subsidize the building and operation of ethanol plants,
usually with incentives and property tax breaks. Many of these
plants have been cited for water and air pollution violations.

Yet another subsidy, more than 50 cents a gallon, occurs
at the pump. The fuel desperately needs it because, depending on
the ethanol content and the vehicle, it gets anywhere from 5
percent to 30 percent worse mileage efficiency than regular
unleaded.

After all this, how can we view the corn
ethanol apparatus any other way than the obvious? It is little more
than political gift to the corn and ethanol lobbies.

When
you scratch beyond those lobbies' slogans and sound bites, the
realities emerge.The latest: Some, perhaps a majority, of our
newest ethanol plants are making the switch from natural gas to
coal to make the fuel. Because coal is cheaper, a new Iowa ethanol
plant has chosen that route. Similar plants are planned for North
Dakota, Montana, Minnesota and perhaps Kansas.

The
problem, says the Natural Resources Defense Council, is that the
carbon emissions alone from the coal plants will far outweigh any
possible gains in using ethanol in our tanks.

Other corn
ethanol realities:

Producing one
gallon of corn ethanol needs 1,700 gallons of water to irrigate the
corn and process the fuel, according to Cornell researcher David
Pimentel, who's been lambasted by ethanol proponents because he
says what they don't like to hear. Because of that depletion, the
Ogallala Aquifer in the Plains is under considerable stress. Crop
irrigation has already effectively dried up most of the aquifer in
the Texas Panhandle, western Kansas and eastern Colorado.

Growing corn for ethanol increases soil erosion and
reduces biodiversity, according to Washington State University
researchers.

The Des Moines
Register, in an enterprise story last fall, found that
Iowa's ethanol plants have contaminated the state's air and water.
A corn ethanol plant in Hastings, Neb., was cited for clean-air
violations every year from 1995 to 2004. And some studies performed
in California, where ethanol blends are required in the Sacramento
and Los Angeles areas, show that the fuel increases harmful
emissions.

The rich get richer: Nearly half of
all ethanol plants are owned by Cargill and ADM, and that
percentage is likely to increase, according to the Renewable Fuels
Association.

In parts of the Midwest this
spring, the price of Ethanol-10 was higher than regular unleaded.
Since a gallon of E-10 lacks the energy content of a gallon of
regular, the price of the former must be 15 to 75 cents cheaper to
offer any real savings for consumers. (Check out
www.fueleconomy.gov)

So does all this mean we
should forget ethanol entirely as a player in our energy future?
Well, no.

Ethanol will become a more attractive
alternative when we kick our corn addiction and get serious about
more efficient alternatives. It can be made from numerous materials
— landfill waste, livestock manure, even beer waste, as Coors
is demonstrating.

But what really has scientists and
researchers excited is cellulose.These materials include wheat
straw, hemp, miscanthus and switchgrass. The latter promises the
greatest rewards.The technology is developing quickly. The huge
advantages of cellulosic ethanol are threefold — it's much
easier on our natural resources than corn, it yields much more
energy per acre(and it's a perennial), and it emits two-thirds less
greenhouse gases.

America's first commercial cellulosic
ethanol plant may break ground next year in Idaho. It will use
wheat straw and barley to make its ethanol. That's a good first
step. From there, we can pursue truly environmentally friendly
fuels and put this culture of corn ethanol to bed.

Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a
writer and reporter in Grand Island,
Nebraska.

]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryAgricultureWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleLions and tigers and wolves, oh my, even in the
Midwesthttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/15637
The writer says lions are moving east into Nebraska and
other Midwestern states Don’t look now, but
there may be a couple of keen eyes within a placid suburb or rural
Midwestern neighborhood. In fact, they might be up a tree.

That’s where Nebraska’s most recent mountain
lion was spotted earlier this year. The 100-pound animal was
lounging comfortably in a tree in South Sioux City, across the
Missouri River from Sioux City, when Elidia Valdivia noticed it.

"I really wasn’t scared," she told the
Sioux City Journal. "It wasn’t growling or
anything. It was just lying there, kind of sleeping. Squirrels were
running around, and it just looked at them."

The Nebraska
Game and Parks Commission was notified, a sniper called in and the
majestic male lion was taken down in accordance with the
agency’s policy: Any mountain lion in or close to urban areas
gets the death penalty.

For better or worse, mountain
lions are moving into the Midwest. In the past three years, cougars
have been spotted, captured or killed in or near the large cities
of Minneapolis, Kansas City and Omaha.

The lions are
migrating eastward because of human development pressures on the
Front Range of the Rockies and the increasing abundance of deer,
their favorite prey. Mountain lions once roamed most of the
continent, but were wiped out from the Midwest by the 20th century.
The sightings and shootings of lions in the past decade mark an end
to the animals’ century-long absence on the Plains. The Black
Hills, it is estimated, are home to more than 125 cougars, and it
is likely that some of those are fanning out over the Midwest, too.

Wildlife lovers find this a scintillating development. If
you think they’re delighted in Nebraska, imagine the wildlife
enthusiasts in North Dakota. That state may be getting mountain
lions from the south and west, gray wolves from the north and east
and black bears from the north.

"We have spent the last
50 years restoring the prey base of deer, turkey and other
wildlife, with some very good successes," says Duane Hovorka,
director of the Nebraska Wildlife Federation. "I think it is just
logical to assume the predators will find the food and move in.

"We’re going to need public education about these
animals," he adds, "or we’ll run into increasing conflicts.
The alternative is to shoot anything larger than a coyote, and that
doesn’t strike me as the best solution."

Hovorka’s analysis has plenty of public support, but not
necessarily with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and similar
agencies in nearby states. Ironically, on its Web site, the
Nebraska commission exhorts "understanding and tolerance" of
mountain lions to "prevent us from repeating the mistake of
extirpating this magnificent feline from Nebraska once again."

That sounds honorable, but the fact is that the Nebraska
Game and Parks Commission — as well as hunters, ranchers, law
enforcement officers and others who have encountered and killed
cougars in Nebraska, Iowa and elsewhere on the Plains — show
little tolerance for the animals. They often come off as
trigger-happy and heavy-handed.

Six mountain lions, a
protected species in Nebraska, have been killed in the state since
1991. One was hit by a train, but of the other five, only one was
killed in an urban area, and that animal posed no immediate threat.

The truth is that mountains lions are more scared of
humans than we are of them. It doesn’t help that old
stereotypes about predators still exist. Mountain lions were cast
as villains in old episodes of "Lassie" and "Bonanza," and that
perspective hasn’t changed much. In a more recent example,
looming terrorists were depicted as a wolf pack in a George W. Bush
television commercial last year.

If animal-control
representatives are continuously seen as oppressive and paranoid by
some members of the public, those same people may refuse to contact
authorities when they see a mountain lion. They may fear that game
officials will come out and take the animal down. And history backs
them up.

One of the realities today is that many, many
more Americans — five or six times as many — would
rather watch wildlife than shoot it. That gap grows every year.

So, it makes sense to learn a little about coexisting
with some of the newest residents here in Nebraska and other
Midwestern states. You’d think we could find alternatives to
gunning down every mountain lion that crosses the border — or
that takes a five-minute break to relax in a neighborhood tree.

Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org).
He lives and writes in Grand Island,
Nebraska.

]]>No publisherWildlifeWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleWho took the 'farm' out of the Farm Bureau?http://www.hcn.org/issues/286/15117
Despite its name, the Farm Bureau doesn't care much for
farmers. That’s how three Nebraska farmers felt
about the American Farm Bureau Federation back in 1964.

That was the year the Ohmstedes and Schutte, leaders of the Webster
County Farm Bureau, were booted out of the state and national Farm
Bureaus because they challenged both organizations’ refusal
to back price supports for wheat farmers. In the process, they say,
they discovered that the so-called "Voice of American agriculture"
didn’t care to speak for people on the ground.

"We
were always told the Farm Bureau was a democratic organization,"
Frances Ohmstede said recently from her home in Lincoln, Neb. "But
it is not a democratic group; it is autocratic. I feel very sorry
for the farmers like us who were deceived into believing the Farm
Bureau was going to help them."

Today, a growing number
of rural Americans have concluded, like the Ohmstedes and Schutte
in 1964, that the Farm Bureau is not on their side.

"The
Farm Bureau has used the American farmer to build one of the
largest insurance and financial empires in the United States," said
Al Krebs, editor and publisher of The Agribusiness Examiner. The
Examiner is the weekly newsletter of the Corporate Agribusiness
Research Project in Everett, Wash., which monitors the impacts of
agribusiness on family farms and rural communities.

In
its policy paper, "Agriculture Under Siege," the Nebraska Farm
Bureau says that threats to the 21st century farmer include local
zoning regulations as well as the Endangered Species Act, pesticide
regulations, the Clean Water Act, the Food Quality Protection Act,
and school food-service officials. These are not threats to farmers
in Nebraska and elsewhere who are fighting to stay on the land.
They are, however, threats to the Farm Bureau itself, which seems
more concerned with real estate, mega-malls, fertilizer sales and
oil development.

The Farm Bureau fights attempts to
prohibit corporate farming — even as Great Plains farmers
continue their exodus from the land. In its simplest formula, the
growth of industrial farming means fewer and fewer farmers, fewer
small businessmen in the countryside, and fewer rural communities.

But the "farm" in Farm Bureau hasn’t kept the
organization from advancing other viewpoints. It has contested the
Equal Rights Amendment and called for the abolition of the federal
departments of Energy and Education; its Texas affiliate has
opposed unemployment compensation and workers’ compensation,
while supporting cutbacks in food stamps for poor families. In its
"Policy 2004" statement, the Idaho Farm Bureau supported school
vouchers, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages,
and reforms that smell a lot like "veggie libel" laws.

In
1967, New York Rep. Joseph Resnick, D, described the Farm Bureau as
the "right wing in overalls." More recently, professional
outdoorsman Tony Dean said the South Dakota Farm Bureau’s
resolutions read like a "John Birch Society primer."

National and state Farm Bureaus endlessly reiterate the need for
America to protect and bolster its "safe, abundant and affordable
food supply." What they fail to add, and what many Americans fail
to see, is that the Farm Bureau way to do that is to promote
corporate agriculture and oppose moratoriums on corporate farm
mergers, both of which drive farmers off the land; to oppose
measures that would enhance the fortunes of farm laborers and the
rural farm environment, because, it says, they are bad for
business; and to favor large food processors over small food
producers.

It’s no wonder that farmers make less on
a box of Wheaties than does Tiger Woods, whose picture graces some
cereal packages.

The Farm Bureau claims its current
membership is at a record high — more than 5.4 million
families. Yet census statistics show fewer than 1.9 million farmers
in the United States, a number that seems to dwindle daily.

"Is it any wonder," Nebraska’s Bryce Ohmstede said
40 years ago, "that farmers ask, ‘Are there any farmers in
the Farm Bureau?’ "

Pete Letheby is a
newspaper editor in Grand Island,
Nebraska.

]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryEssaysArticleWho took the 'farm' out of the Farm Bureau?http://www.hcn.org/wotr/14951
The writer says the American Farm Bureau Federation speaks
for agribusiness but not the family farmer That’s how three Nebraska farmers felt
about the American Farm Bureau Federation back in 1964.

That was the year when the Ohmstedes and Schutte, leaders of the
Webster County Farm Bureau, were booted out of the state and
national Farm Bureaus because they challenged the
organizations’ refusal to back price supports for wheat
farmers. In the process, they say, they discovered that the
so-called "Voice of American agriculture" didn’t care to
speak for people on the ground.

"We were always told the
Farm Bureau was a democratic organization," Frances Ohmstede said
recently from her home in Lincoln, Neb. "But it is not a democratic
group; it is autocratic. I feel very sorry for the farmers like us
who were deceived into believing the Farm Bureau was going to help
them."

Today, a growing number of rural Americans have
concluded, like the Ohmstedes and Schutte in 1964, that the Farm
Bureau is not on their side.

"The Farm Bureau has used
the American farmer to build one of the largest insurance and
financial empires in the United States," said Al Krebs, editor and
publisher of The Agribusiness Examiner. The
Examiner is the weekly newsletter of the
Corporate Agribusiness Research Project in Everett, Wash., which
monitors the impacts of agribusiness on family farms and rural
communities.

In its policy paper, "Agriculture Under
Siege," the Nebraska Farm Bureau says that threats to the 21st
century farmer include local zoning regulations as well as the
Endangered Species Act, pesticide regulations, the Clean Water Act,
the Food Quality Protection Act, and school food-service officials.
These are not threats to farmers in Nebraska and elsewhere who are
fighting to stay on the land. They are, however, threats to the
Farm Bureau itself, which seems more concerned with real estate,
mega-malls, fertilizer sales and oil development.

The
Farm Bureau continues to ride its corporate farming train —
fighting attempts to prohibit corporate farming — even as
Great Plains farmers continue their exodus from the land. In its
simplest formula, the growth of industrial farming means fewer and
fewer farmers, fewer small businessmen in the countryside and fewer
rural communities.

But the "farm" in Farm Bureau
hasn’t kept the organization from advancing other viewpoints.
It has contested the Equal Rights Amendment and called for the
abolition of the federal departments of Energy and Education; its
Texas affiliate has opposed unemployment compensation and
workers’ compensation, while supporting cutbacks in food
stamps for poor families. In its "Policy 2004" statement, the Idaho
Farm Bureau supported school vouchers, a constitutional amendment
banning same-sex marriages and reforms that smell a lot like
"veggie libel" laws.

In his 1967 book, New York Rep.
Joseph Resnick described the Farm Bureau as the "right wing in
overalls." More recently, professional outdoorsman Tony Dean said
South Dakota Farm Bureau resolutions read like a "John Birch
Society primer."

National and state Farm Bureaus
endlessly reiterate the need for America to protect and bolster its
"safe, abundant and affordable food supply." What they fail to add,
and what many Americans fail to see, is that the Farm Bureau way to
do that is to promote corporate agriculture and oppose moratoriums
on corporate farm mergers, both of which drive farmers off the
land; to oppose measures that would enhance the fortunes of farm
laborers and the rural farm environment because, it says, they are
bad for business; and to favor large food processors over small
food producers.

It’s no wonder that farmers get
less from a box of Wheaties than Tiger Woods, whose picture graces
some cereal packages.

The Farm Bureau claims its current
membership is at a record high — more than 5.4 million
families. Yet census statistics show fewer than 1.9 million farmers
in the United States, a number that seems to dwindles daily.

"Is it any wonder," Nebraska’s Bryce Ohmstede said
40 years ago, "that farmers ask, ‘Are there any farmers in
the Farm Bureau?’ "

Pete Letheby is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News (hcn.org). He is a newspaper editor in Grand
Island, Nebraska.

]]>No publisherEnergy & IndustryWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleThanks, Frank and Deborah Popper, for pointing the
wayhttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/14186
Pete Letheby admits that two New Jersey professors were
dead right about the coming of a Buffalo Commons on the Great
Plains Back in 1987, when Frank and Deborah Popper
traversed the Great Plains ballyhooing their "Buffalo Commons"
prediction for the region, they were ridiculed. At some outposts,
bodyguards were needed to ensure their safety. A Montana appearance
was canceled because of death threats.

Funny thing,
though: Parts of the Great Plains are evolving into a mid-19th
century wilderness dominated by grasslands and bison.

The
trend continues unabated 16 years after the Poppers’ initial
analysis. Depopulation persists.We are beginning to realize that
despite our greatest efforts, we are unable to conquer this vast
expanse of middle America.

"Instead of beating our land
into submission," North Dakota researcher Gregory Wald once asked,
"why not take what it gives easily?"

Today, many people
believe it is time for new thinking: Why not expedite the
Poppers’ vision and turn a portion of these Great Plains back
to their natural grasslands? Why not re-establish a prairie where
bison roam, other native wildlife is restored and people find
incentive to build new lives? Maybe it’s time, as the East
Coast professors suggested, to embrace our heritage and our unique
terrain.

At one time, it is estimated, there were nearly
700,000 square miles of grasslands in the Great Plains. That was
comparable to a Gulf of Mexico of bluestem and buffalo grass, or a
Caribbean Sea of blue grama and switch grass -- with some
wildflowers splashed in.

This grassland encompassed
nearly all or part of 13 U.S. states and Canadian provinces --
North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana,
Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Alberta, Saskatchewan and
Manitoba.

It would be difficult today to imagine the
enormity of it all, the cornucopia of wildlife and the endless
herds of bison. But many people are doing just that. A great
Northern Plains grassland is the rallying cry of the Conservation
Alliance of the Great Plains, based in Lincoln, Neb. With the
future of Great Plains agriculture uncertain at best, the alliance
says the time is right for change.

A starting point for
such a vision is the existing national grasslands -- Buffalo Gap in
South Dakota, Little Missouri in North Dakota, Thunder Basin in
Wyoming and Oglala in Nebraska.

There are huge chunks of
tribal lands in the Great Plains, mostly in South Dakota and
Montana, and the Native American aspiration is clear: Restore
reservations to native prairie ecosystems, including grasslands,
bison and prairie dogs. A coalition called the Intertribal Bison
Cooperative became a reality in Albuquerque in 1992, and it now
includes 42 tribes and thousands of bison. The Cheyenne River Sioux
in north-central South Dakota have been active in prairie
restoration and have reintroduced black-footed ferrets, once a
vibrant species on the western Plains.

The USDA’s
latest farm bill includes a new Grasslands Reserve Program, which
offers incentives for ranchers and farmers to protect sensitive
grasslands. It is small in scope, but perhaps another new
beginning. Much more will be needed if a giant grandeur of grasses
is to become a reality. Since 98 percent of the Northern Great
Plains lands is in private hands, there would be a need to build
public-private partnerships and establish conservation easements.

"The impetus has to come locally," said Tyler Sutton,
president of the Conservation Alliance. "None of this is going to
happen unless local leaders allow it to happen. But do we rest our
future on the single leg of agriculture?"

The Conservation Alliance is
not alone in its dream. The World Wildlife Fund has made a Northern
Great Plains grassland one of its priorities and has compared the
area to the African Serengeti. A nonprofit group called the Great
Plains Restoration Council, with offices in Denver and Fort Worth,
has dedicated itself to a "practical implementation of a Buffalo
Commons." It has launched "The Million Acre Project" to restore and
connect a million acres of native prairie. Pheasants Forever and
Ducks Unlimited have joined the chorus, the latter inaugurating a
"Grasslands for Tomorrow" initiative to "achieve a sustainable
landscape for wildlife, agriculture and rural economies."

Collectively, there is a movement; the Poppers were on to
something. Montana writer Richard Manning, in his book "Grassland:
The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American
Prairie," reminds us what’s at stake:

"We are all
creatures of grass," he wrote. "It is silent; we are not. It is
free, and we aren’t. It is large to a degree we cannot
comprehend, so much so that we as a nation have spent 150 years in
an assault on its whole, trying to reduce it to bits that fit our
grasp. Grassland is indivisible. It endures."

Pete
Letheby is a newspaper editor and columnist in Grand Island, Neb.
He wrote this essay for Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News (hcn.org).

]]>No publisherWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleA river, a bird and a flock of untruthshttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/13536
In Nebraska and its neighboring Plains states, U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service biologists and other employees are again
taking shots right and left from critics. In Nebraska and its neighboring Plains states, U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service biologists and other employees are again
taking shots right and left from critics. It would be one thing if
those blows were legitimate - almost all of them, however, hit
below the belt.

A recent Fish and Wildlife decision
designated critical habitat for the threatened piping plover along
three Nebraska rivers, including the Platte. After the decision was
announced, the critics began to howl and the scare tactics began.

Nebraskans First, a group of politically active central
and western Nebraska irrigators, has been among the opposition's
strongest voices. The group has, among other things, accused the
Fish and Wildlife Service of instigating a "land control program."

Inside and outside of Nebraska, the group blames the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service (and other federal agencies) for:

- Shutting off irrigation water in Oregon's Klamath River
Valley during a drought to protect the endangered suckerfish and
threatened coho salmon, an act that supposedly "ripped the local
economy apart,"

- Planting tufts of hair from a captive
lynx in two national forests in Washington "in hopes of tricking
the public into believing critical habitat for the Canadian lynx
needed to be designated," and

- Trying to gain control of
the entire Platte River -- no small feat since the river spans the
width of Nebraska from Wyoming and Colorado on the west, to the
Missouri River on the east -- about 500 miles worth.

It's
time for folks in Nebraska, and elsewhere, to dig a little deeper.

On Point No. 1, the Klamath controversy: Detractors want
us to believe that this was a simple case of farmers vs. fish. It
makes good headlines and can often persuade Midwesterners - many of
whom are members of the anti-government and anti-environment
faction - to lean in one direction without investigating. Here are
some real truths:

Agriculture is not a major player in
the Klamath-area economy. A study found that while farmers there
use up to 95 percent of the surface water, they contribute to less
than 1 percent of the area's economy. The Klamath problems are the
result of a century of misguided federal government policies, not
the Endangered Species Act, the Fish and Wildlife Service and other
government laws and agencies.

There is not nearly enough
water in the Klamath to serve all interests. Because of water
withdrawals for farmers, more than 90 percent of the salmon
population has died off. That includes the recent fish kill of up
to 30,000 chinook. An agency staffer's recent whistleblower
complaint may tell us more about pressure to shift more water to
irrigators.

An estimated 7,000 commercial fishing jobs
have been lost in the past 30 years because of agricultural
diversions and other mismanagement. Eighty percent of the area's
wetlands have been drained, destroying vital habitat for migratory
birds. Agricultural chemicals have leached into and polluted the
Klamath basin and area wetlands.

On Point No. 2, the lynx
controversy: This story proves exactly how long a falsity can
linger. Two separate studies have totally exonerated Fish and
Wildlife and Forest Service employees of any wrongdoing whatsoever.
The Department of Interior and the General Accounting Office have
vindicated the biologists. This is a story that originated in the
Washington Times earlier this year. The Associated Press and The
Wall Street Journal were among the media dispersing the myth. The
story was then jumped on by anti-government and anti-environmental
critics before any fact-finding was done.

As it turned
out, the story and follow-ups were chock-full of factual errors. In
reality, no lynx hairs were ever "planted." Controlled samples were
submitted to test the accuracy of federal wildlife labs. There was
nothing deceitful about it.

Outside Online, a Web site
for outdoorsmen, has called the incident "a case study in
media-amplified demagoguery." The media watchdog group Fairness
& Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has ripped the Washington Times
for its "hoax" story. Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility has called the reporting "a disgraceful saga of ugly
politics fueled by shoddy journalism."

Still, amazingly,
Nebraskans First has a link to the Times' "hoax" story on the lead
page of its Web site. On Point No. 3, the Fish and Wildlife
Service's purported agenda to control the Platte River: There is
not now, nor has there ever been, any such agenda.

In my
numerous interviews and other relations with Fish and Wildlife
employees over the past two decades, I have found them to be some
of the most dedicated and open-minded people around. Yet they are
often the target of relentless critics looking for someone or
something to blame when things don't go their way - such as
designation of critical habitat for a threatened shorebird.

The Platte River is important to a lot of Nebraskans.
Communities, wildlife and farmers need its water. It is a shared
treasure, an ecological wonder, a historical jewel. Because of
that, the Platte and those who seek to steward it deserve much
better than the deceptions that some groups choose to perpetuate.

Pete Letheby is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News in
Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He is a reporter in Grand Island,
Nebraska.

.]]>No publisherGrowth & SustainabilityWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleThe name might be green, but not the grouphttp://www.hcn.org/issues/228/11284
The writer warns readers to be wary of organizations'
names, which can be deceiving as to their missions.When it comes to environmental, wildlife or habitat issues, it's smart to be wary of names and titles. I was reminded of that recently when a group called the Nebraska Habitat Conservation Coalition gathered to consider strategies for halting habitat protection for wildlife along the Platte River.

That's right. The Habitat Conservation Coalition opposes habitat conservation. The group - which consists mostly of natural-resources districts, public-power districts and irrigators - is organizing opposition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's proposed designation of critical habitat along the Platte River for the threatened piping plover.

I have no problem with the group's stated goal of obtaining more time for public comment. Public discussion is the American way. But if you're against habitat conservation, don't hide behind a phony name that implies otherwise.

Here's another example: I figured the National Wetlands Coalition must be a group that supports the preservation of our vanishing wetlands. Wrong. I discovered that it heartily supports developing those wetlands. It's composed of oil, construction and other land-use interests - including Exxon, Shell, Kerr-McGee and the American Petroleum Institute - and it's powerful. It has helped to remove legal protections for as much as half of the country's wetlands.

America the Beautiful surely must be a group that advocates preserving our wildlife or other natural treasures. Oops! This is the name of a corporate group that promotes packaging and has no use for recycling.

The Global Climate Coalition wants to stop all efforts to slow the burning of fossil fuels and it continues to deny the overwhelming evidence of global warming. Thankfully, this group is falling apart as we speak - Ford, DuPont, Daimler Chrysler, Texaco, GM and many other corporations have abandoned it because it's too extreme.

A real beauty is Citizens for the Environment: Its timber and chemical corporation members are involved in education efforts that combat both recycling and energy conservation.

There is also a group called the Abundant Wildlife Society, its members Wyoming-based cattlemen and cattle industry backers. Silly me - I always thought the cow was a domesticated animal.

Many "Friends of the River" groups have sprung up in the West, most of them genuinely concerned about the deteriorating condition of America's beautiful rivers. But one Friends of the River group in Massachusetts was partially funded by an off-road vehicle dealer and it persuaded citizens to vote against scenic status for a river. Now there's a river with some false friends.

In my home state of Nebraska, we boast a unique group called C-POW, short for Committee of Pollution by Waterfowl. In this case, it's not the name but the cause that confuses.

On the surface, the group doesn't like duck and goose manure. Hey, who could possibly be in favor of duck and goose manure? Beneath the surface, however, the group is against much more than that. It opposes using Platte River water for anything other than irrigation.

It has tendered the theory that more habitat for waterfowl will lead to more waterfowl, which will unfortunately lead to more waterfowl manure, which will lead to more sickness and disease among people like you and me. C-POW is a by-product of Nebraskans First, a group whose name has nothing to do with college football, but implies that Nebraskans should come before Kansans, Iowans, South Dakotans and everyone else who lives outside the state's borders. The group cries foul anytime anyone feels Platte River water should be used for something other than watering crops.

"Irrigators First" would be much more honest and up front as a name, but maybe the folks of Nebraskans First felt that wouldn't attract much support.

It could be that I should give some of these organizations the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the Nebraska Habitat Conservation Coalition merely shortened its name for simplicity's sake. It's really the Nebraska (Let's Do Away With) Habitat Conservation (for Piping Plovers, Who Aren't All That Threatened Anyway) Coalition (of People Who Oppose All Environmental Regulations, Especially If They Might Take Away Some of Our Water). That's more like it.

Pete Letheby is a newspaper editor and columnist in Grand Island, Nebraska.